maanantai 5. joulukuuta 2011

Knifemaking

I found YP-taonta (http://www.yp-taonta.fi/) puukko-blade from my garage few days ago when I was rearringing stuff there. I was supposed to make knife out of it long ago, but that project had been buried somewhere so I thought to start it NOW.

First have to get handle some shape. I like traditional puukko handle with big knob that it´s easy to pull out of sheath so that was easy decision and handle material would be plain birch.

After made brass bolster and hole to handle knife was ready to build up to see what it look like. For handle hole I used drill bit and home made small saw you can see in picture. It´s made out of jigsaw blade.

Next step is to rivet tang into the handle and use epoxy to glue everything together. I like her slow epoxy so you can work without hurry and disassemble parts if there´s some problem without hassle.

Everything looked good so I needed somekind of vise which allow me to press parts together and rivet same time. I made a makeshift tang rivet, from shortened ammo cartridge of .222. I took the primer off from it and reamed the hole big enough for the tang to come through it snugly (saw it done before somewhere like that).
Vise I build up from trashes I found my garage and it worked pretty fine.

So after glue was drying 24 hours it looks like this:

Next step is to shape bolster and leather to fit the handle and oil the handle. Then it´s ready to use after I have made sheath for it. This was actually my first puukko I have ever made. I have made one knife with different technics about 20 years ago, but that´s whole different story.

Yep, it´s very same blade you saw few years ago. And now was finally a day to start project with it. Better later than never :)

One thing I noticed yesterday that I should shape brass bolster more accurately to fit the handle before glueing. Now when it´s attached to hande shaping is much more difficult cause have to avoid to damage the handle itself.

Actually it would have been best to attach all parts first and then start to shape handle. But life is learning, next time I´m bit wiser in many sense.